Tuesday, 14 April 2015

enlargen your world....

Back in January, I joined a choir. On Saturday night, I was one of two hundred singers performing with a live rock band in front of a sell-out crowd of 600 people at the Octagon in Sheffield. With all the various technical rehearsals and quite a lot of hanging around, it was a pretty long day.... but it was also an excellent day.

It's pretty disconcerting singing when you can't really hear anyone else singing, but the acoustics of the venue, the volume of the band and the fact that I was standing right next to them (and behind all the other basses) all combined to mean that this was exactly the position I found myself in. Still, that's what rehearsals are for, right? I'm also told that the band were so loud for some of the gig, that in places, our voices were a little overwhelmed by the instruments. Still, it was a good night and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.

I know I did.

I've always liked singing, but I haven't sung as part of a choir for the best part of thirty years. I've really enjoyed the last few months and, in spite of the fact that next season includes such delights as a medley of songs from "Frozen", I'm really looking forward to getting started again in rehearsals next week. We've got a CD recording in Scarborough coming up in July, so it's going to be another step into the unknown for me. Exciting.

To be honest, this marathon has been looming large in my life over the last few months, and it's been great to have something else to think about.

I won't lie to you though: it's been nice to put the MP3s of the bass tracks to one side for the first time in a few months and to listen to something else. As my wife is in New York with work, I had the rare treat of a run by myself this evening. The sun was out and I plugged myself into Metallica and had a not-quite-so-slow-as-recently trudge around the Embankment. It were grand, kid. Eeee, it were grand.